The John Marshall Law Review
Volume 35 | Issue 2
Article 4
Winter 2002
The Labor Strike: Is It Still A Useful Economic
Weapon for Unions?, 35 J. Marshall L. Rev. 255
(2002)
Gerald E. Berendt
David Moberg
Stephen Franklin
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Gerald E. Berendt, David Moberg & Stephen Franklin, The Labor Strike: Is It Still A Useful Economic Weapon for Unions?, 35 J.
Marshall L. Rev. 255 (2002)
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FOURTH ANNUAL ARTHUR J. GOLDBERG
CONFERENCE
THE LABOR STRIKE: IS IT STILL A
USEFUL ECONOMIC WEAPON FOR
UNIONS?
GERALD E. BERENDT, DAVID MOBERG, STEPHEN FRANKLIN
Professor Gerald E. Berendt: Welcome to The John Marshall
Law School and the Fourth Annual Arthur J. Goldberg
Conference. I am Gerry Berendt, a professor here at the Law
School and the Director of the Goldberg Conference.
The conference is named for Justice Arthur J. Goldberg who
was the United States Secretary of Labor, an Associate Justice on
the United States Supreme Court, and an Ambassador to the
United Nations. The late Justice Goldberg was an outstanding
member of The John Marshall Law School's faculty in the 1930s,
40s and early 1950's.
The first two conferences in this annual series focused on
historical subjects.
The first conference coincided with the
beginning of the Law School's Centennial observance and was
devoted to Justice Goldberg and his accomplishments in the area
of labor relations. The second conference dealt with the Pullman
Strike.
Last year at the third conference, we moved into a
thoroughly modern area, the effects of globalization on workers
and unions. This fourth conference is devoted to a question of
considerable contemporary significance, but with relevant
historical antecedents as well: The Labor Strike: Is It Still a
Useful Economic Weapon For Unions?
In a few minutes, I shall provide a brief overview of the law
governing the strike as a foundation for the remarks of our
distinguished speakers, David Moberg and Stephen Franklin. But
first, I would like to acknowledge the people who make this annual
conference possible.
This conference would not be possible without the financial
contributions of private donors, particularly the family of Justice
Goldberg. Justice Goldberg's daughter, Barbara GoldbergCramer, has supported the conference from its inception. Mrs.
Cramer is here with us today and has brought her sons, Daniel
Cramer and Matthew Cramer (and her cousin Charlotte Lenhoff).
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[35:255
This year we would especially like to thank our individual donors
whose large and small contributions have made it possible for us
to continue to offer this conference without a registration fee.
I would also like to thank the Chicago Federation of Labor,
the Chicago Chapter of the Industrial Relations Research
Association and the Chicago Decalogue Society for their help in
publicizing the conference.
In addition, we wish to acknowledge the assistance and
support of the Conference's Advisory Committee, the Law School's
Board of Trustees, and our Deans and Administrators, for
supporting the Goldberg conference. I want to extend a special
thanks to Gary Watson and the Event Management Department
for planning and coordinating another excellent presentation, our
Publications Department for another exceptional brochure, our
public relations department for arranging the publicity, and our
media services department for providing the audio/visual support
for the conference. I would also like to thank Assistant Dean Bill
Beach for leading the efforts to fund this year's conference.
Finally, I would like to single out several academic colleagues for
their encouragement and assistance in planning the program:
Professor David Stebenne of Ohio State University, John Marshall
Professors Walter J. Kendall, Samuel Olken and Ralph Ruebner.
It is not too early to add to this list Professor Arthur Malinowski of
Loyola University, who is already giving me ideas for next year's
program. Thank you all.
OVERVIEW
Let me begin with an overview of today's topic with a
definition: A labor strike is the voluntary, temporary withholding
of services by employees in order to compel their employer to agree
to their demands. I intentionally did not hunt for a definition from
cases or treatises. This is my definition based on experience, and I
take credit for any shortcomings in the definition.
Note that I did not include the word "union" in this definition,
because a union's presence is not a prerequisite for a strike, as
illustrated by the famous Washington Aluminum case in which
un-represented employees engaged in a spontaneous work
stoppage to avoid and protest unsafe working conditions.1 Today,
however, we shall focus primarily on strikes called by unions.
Note that I also characterized the work stoppage as
"voluntary," that is, at the initiative of the employees and their
union. This is to distinguish the strike from the lockout or lay offs,
where the employer takes the initiative to deny work to its
employees to achieve the employer's objectives. The distinction
1. National Labor Relations Board v. Wash. Aluminum Co., 370 U.S. 9
(1962).
2002]
Arthur J. Goldberg
between the strike and the lockout and who initiated the work
stoppage is fundamental because, to a large extent, it determines
the rights of both the employees and the employer with respect to
replacing the employees.
I also described the work stoppage as "temporary." When
employees strike, they do not resign from or quit their
employment. The National Labor Relations Board and the federal
courts have long recognized an important distinction between
striking and quitting employment. Although strikers withhold
their services from the employer, they remain statutory employees
protected at least to some degree by the National Labor Relations
Act.
Employees who quit, however, are no longer statutory
employees and are therefore no longer protected by the Act. A year
ago, a number of Major League Baseball umpires learned this the
hard way.
There are several other fundamental distinctions that bear
emphasis. There are essentially three kinds of strikes. First,
there is the unprotected strike. In the private sector, the best
example that comes to mind is the so-called "wildcat" strike where
employees who have a union strike without their union's
authorization. The National Labor Relations Board and courts
have also held unprotected a wide range of job actions, including
the partial strike, the work slowdown and intermittent "quicky"
strikes. Under Section 8(d) of the National Labor Relations Act,
employees lose their protected status for striking to modify or
terminate an existing labor contract without first satisfying
certain conditions, including notifying the employer of intent to
modify or terminate the agreement, waiting for sixty days and the
termination of the agreement, and informing mediation services.
In the public sector, the strike is a protected right for some
employees, depending on the jurisdiction, but is illegal for a
significant number of employees who perform critical services.
Police and firefighters may not strike under various state and local
laws, but complex interest arbitration provisions are frequently
substituted for their right to strike. Federal employees are also
prohibited from striking. Many of us remember the strike by
federal air traffic controllers in 1981. Then President Ronald
Reagan terminated the strikers and disestablished their union,
PATCO, for engaging in an illegal strike. That strike is often cited
as a watershed event in the modern history of the strike and
collective bargaining, and I will say more about its impact shortly.
The bottom line to this brief discussion of the unprotected strike is
that an employer may legally terminate employees who engage in
illegal or unprotected work stoppages or job actions. As a practical
matter, however, the employer may not wish to do so if it would be
difficult or impossible to replace unprotected strikers. But the
employees
and their union could miscalculate whether
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[35:255
replacements can be found, as the air traffic controllers did.
There are two types of strikes that are considered "protected,"
the unfair labor practice strike and the economic strike. However,
the rights of employees who engage in an economic strike are not
as great as the rights of those who engage in an unfair labor
practice strike. This distinction has been a matter of considerable
controversy for many years.
Sixty-three years ago, the United States Supreme Court
decided a case called NLRB v. Mackay Radio & Telegraph
Company.2 In that case, an employer replaced striking employees
at one of its offices with employees from its other offices. When
the unsuccessful strike ended, the strikers sought reinstatement.
After most of the replacements left, the employer recalled only the
strikers least involved with the union and denied reinstatement to
the strikers most prominent within the union. The Supreme
Court declared that strikers remain statutory employees who are
protected by the Act's prohibition against discriminatory
treatment. Therefore, the Court held that the employer committed
an unfair labor practice by refusing to reinstate strikers based on
their degree of union activity.
At first blush this case might appear to be a victory for unions
and strikers. However, to get to its ultimate conclusion, the Court
decided an issue that has haunted the labor movement ever since.
In reaching its conclusion, the Court observed that the employees
struck, not because the employer committed an unfair labor
practice, but because of their dissatisfaction with the state of the
negotiations. The Court continued:
Nor was it an unfair labor practice to replace the striking employees
with others in an effort to carry on the business. Although [section]
13 provides, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed so as to
interfere with or impede or diminish in any way the right to strike,"
it does not follow that an employer, guilty of no act denounced by
the statute, has lost the right to protect and continue his business
by supplying places left vacant by strikers. And he is not bound to
discharge those hired to fill the places of strikers, upon the election
of the latter to resume their employment, in order to create places
for them. The assurance by respondent to those who accepted
employment during the strike that if they so desired their places
might be permanent was not an unfair labor practice nor was it such
to reinstate only so many of the strikers as there were vacant places
to be filled.3
Thus was born the distinction between unfair labor practice
strikes and economic strikes, and the further distinction between
the rights of unfair labor practice strikers and economic strikers
2. National Labor Relations Board v. Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co., 304
U.S. 333 (1938).
3. Id. at 345-46.
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Arthur J. Goldberg
that further developed in later National Labor Relations Board
and court decisions. The relative rights of such strikers may be
summarized as follows: Employees who strike in response to an
employer's unfair labor practice are said to be unfair labor practice
strikers. An employer violates the Act if it promises permanent
positions to replacements who take the jobs of unfair labor practice
strikers. The employer may hire temporary replacements or use
supervisors and managers to remain open during an unfair labor
practice strike. But the employer must reinstate any unfair labor
practice striker who makes an unconditional request for
reinstatement, unless the employer has a legitimate and
substantial business reason not to do so. In effect, it is illegal for
an employer to permanently replace unfair labor practice strikers.
The rights of economic strikers are significantly inferior to
those of unfair labor practice strikers. Employees who strike to
win concessions in collective bargaining are economic strikers. So
too are employees who think they are striking in response to an
employer unfair labor practice, but it turns out that the National
Labor Relations Board and/or the courts conclude their employer
has committed no unfair labor practice. Thus, even employees,
who strike thinking the employer has bargained in bad faith, take
a risk that they will be deemed economic strikers rather than
unfair labor practice strikers. And as the Supreme Court declared
in Mackay Radio, an employer may legally promise permanent
jobs to replacements for economic strikers. As employers are
known to tell employees during organizing campaigns, "if the
union strikes for its bargaining demands, the company has the
right to hire permanent replacements, and you could lose your jobs
forever."
It should be noted that this distinction creates risks for the
The question of whether an employer is
employer as well.
bargaining hard, but in good faith and legally, is often
impressionistic and will not be determined by the Labor Board or
courts for years in some cases. If it is later determined that the
employer bargained in bad faith and committed an unfair labor
practice that prompted the strike, the employees could be unfair
Thus, an
laborers who may not be replaced permanently.
employer could incur substantial liability by hiring permanent
replacements for such strikers under the erroneous impression
Perhaps Congress
that the strikers were economic strikers.
intended to build these risks into the statutory scheme to deter
both labor and management from precipitous resort to self-help
and the consequent disruptions of commerce.
According to the unions, it is little comfort that economic
strikers remain statutory employees, even after they are replaced.
Yes, the employer has a legal obligation to recall permanently
replaced economic strikers on a nondiscriminatory basis upon the
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departure of their so-called permanent replacements.
But
according to the labor movement, the distinction between a striker
who has been permanently replaced and one who has been
terminated is a minimal and insignificant one. So far as the
permanently replaced economic striker is concerned, he or she
might just as well be fired because potential reinstatement is
entirely dependent on the departure of the replacement.
After President Reagan discharged the striking air traffic
controllers in 1981, the number of private sector strikes of any
length or consequence in this country diminished dramatically.
This led the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial
Organizations ("AFL-CIO") to press for amendments to the
National Labor Relations Act to prohibit employers from hiring
permanent replacements for strikers, irrespective of whether the
strike was an unfair labor practice or economic strike. Unions
maintained that the amendments were necessary to restore the
level playing field in the economic resort to self-help. According to
the unions, the bargaining ratio had been tilted management's
way due to Mackay Radio and the example set by President
Reagan when he discharged the air traffic controllers. The
management
community
countered
that
the
proposed
amendments would radically skew the bargaining ratio in labor's
favor by making it virtually risk-free for employees to strike.
Management groups argued that under the present law, the
employer has the important "right to take a strike"; that is to say
"no" to union bargaining demands and leave it to the union to
strike if it wished. Under the current law, if the union strikes for
its demands, the employer is then free to find workers who will
work on the employer's terms. The proposed amendment to forbid
striker replacement would take away these employer rights. The
consequences, management predicted, would be many more
strikes, frequent disruptions of commerce, inflated economic
settlements, higher costs of goods and services passed onto the
consumer, broader inflation, recessions, business failures and high
unemployment. Due to various political factors, Congress never
passed the amendments supported by the AFL-CIO. The debate
goes on.
Has the strike lost its effectiveness as an economic weapon for
organized labor in its effort to win concessions in collective
bargaining? If so, why has this happened? And what can labor do
to restore the strike's effectiveness?
These and other questions will be the subject of the remarks
of our two distinguished speakers whom it is my pleasure to
introduce. Time is reserved for questions and answers following
the speakers' presentations.
Our first speaker is DAVID MOBERG. David Moberg is a
senior editor at In These Times, a Chicago-based national
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Arthur J. Goldberg
newsmagazine committed to extending political and economic
democracy in the United States and around the world and to
opposing the dominance of transnational corporations and the
tyranny of marketplace values over human values. Mr. Moberg is
also a book editor and writes on labor issues for numerous
newspapers, magazines and journals, including The Nation, The
American Prospect, Salon, The Progressive, and the Boston Globe.
A recent article by Mr. Moberg, "The Six-Year Itch: John Sweeney
Sees the AFL-CIO Through Some Growing Pains,"may be found in
the Special Labor Day Issue of The Nation (September 3/10, 2001).
He has been a senior fellow at the Nation Institute.
Our second speaker is STEPHEN FRANKLIN.
Stephen
Franklin is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, where for ten years
he has served as a national and foreign correspondent and covers
workplace issues. Recently, you may have seen his byline
reporting on events in Afghanistan and Pakistan, particularly on
conditions faced by the people of the region and refugee issues.
His recently published book, Three Strikes: Labor's Heartland
Losses and What They Mean for Working Americans (The Guilford
Press 2001), recounts three strikes in Decatur, Illinois in the
1990s and assesses both the strike's effectiveness and organized
labor's future. Before joining the Tribune staff, Mr. Franklin
wrote for the Washington daily News, Elizabeth Daily Journal,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,Miami Herald,PhiladelphiaBulletin, and
Detroit Free Press. He has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist and is a
recipient of a George Polk Award. Mr. Franklin was also a Peace
Corps volunteer in Turkey.
David Moberg: At first glance it seems easy to offer an answer
to the question of whether the strike is still a useful economic
weapon. Judging solely by the numbers, it is not useful, or at least
not as useful as it used to be. According to the measures of strike
activities used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, (1) the number of
strikes involving 1,000 or more workers, (2) the number of workers
involved, (3) worker days idle as a result of strikes, and (4) the
percent of estimated working time idle; strike activity in 1999 hit
the lowest point since 1947, when the Bureau's record keeping
began. However, there was a sharp rebound in 2000, especially in
days idle, but by most measures strike activity was still
comparable to the rest of the 1990s: that is, really, really low. This
decline in strike activity is not caused by unions finding more
successful alternative methods for defending their rights. In fact,
there has been an overall trend towards greater economic
inequality since the early 1970s. Most workers still earn about the
same or less in real terms than they did more than a quarter
century ago.
This impression of inequality is reinforced by the long
anecdotal history of strike failures; deliberate union busting by
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[35:255
employers-even companies provoking strikes to break unions,
and an apparent increase in employer lockouts. The dismal roll
includes such notable strikes going back to the 1980s as PhelpsDodge, PATCO, Brown and Sharpe, International Paper, Hormel,
and the Decatur strikes at Caterpillar and Bridgestone/Firestone
and lockout at Staley that Steve Franklin chronicles in his recent
book.
Nevertheless, some strikes succeed. The Teamsters UPS
strike in 1999 was one of the bigger, more dramatic cases in recent
years. In some cases unions have managed to salvage victory out
of apparent defeats in very long strikes or lockouts. These include
the BASF plant in Louisiana, the Ravenswood Aluminum
Corporation plant in Pennsylvania, and a more than six-year
strike at Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. These victories in difficult
cases of strikes and lockouts come at great cost for workers, their
unions (as institutions), as well as for the employers. The victories
provide little encouragement to workers who may contemplate
striking and should serve as a warning to employers. Yet these
victories do offer some lessons about what strikes entail in the
current climate and how unions might more successfully use the
strike.
Focusing on the issue posed for this conference, the labor
strike, one must ask: is it still a useful economic weapon for
unions? We must rethink the strike. For most people today in the
United States, including most union members and leaders, the
strike involves a formal decision. A striking worker, most often at
the end of a contract, consciously decides to stop work and leave
the workplace.
Strikers expect that the economic pressure
brought to bear on their employer because of lost production will
force some willingness to compromise and settle a dispute. These
strikers also believe that the financial hardship caused by their
not receiving full pay will encourage employers to compromise.
However, it is uneven terrain even on these terms because
corporate pockets are usually deeper than workers' pockets. There
is, however, a modicum of balance. This standard scenario is a
relatively recent invention in American history that involves a
strike that has been very narrowly defined through decades of
legislation, court decisions, contract agreements, customary
expectations, and relationships established between certain groups
of employers and unions.
The development of this standard scenario reflects a political
struggle-a conflict about social power and ideology. But in the
standard scenario, the politics are obscured. While strikes appear
to be simply about withdrawal of labor and economic pressure, the
strike remains a political issue in the broad sense-a question of
power and ideology as much as dollars and cents. Furthermore, as
both history and contemporary experience in the United States
20021
Arthur J. Goldberg
and elsewhere suggest, the strike as an isolated tactic is very
problematic.
Strikes have been turned into isolated tactics
through a process of depoliticization that has left them extremely
vulnerable. The institutional framework that, for a few decades,
supported the standard scenario strike in a few key industries has
virtually disappeared, except for the rules that handicap workers
and unions. In most cases, strikes in the United States today
must be political as well as economic if they are to succeed. The
labor movement needs to approach collective bargaining and
strikes as part of a broader political strategy both to change the
balance of power and to challenge the dominant ideology that
celebrates the unfettered market as the final arbiter of all
questions. Therefore, I argue that strikes have indeed become
much less useful (though not useless) as narrow economic weapons
for unions. However, as part of a broader political strategy,
strikes not only can succeed, but also remain an important weapon
for the labor movement.
It is useful to remember that workers have historically
resorted to strikes not because they almost always succeeded, but
despite the fact that they very often failed. Even if they were often
centered on economic grievances, like trying to restore pay cuts,
strikes were generally seen as part of a broader movement to
restore the dignity of labor lost in the shift from artisan to
industrial work, to establish the eight-hour day, or create the
cooperative commonwealth. These are just a few examples from
more than a century ago.
The history of Chicago in the late nineteenth century reminds
us how different strikes have been at various times from the
standard scenario. There were no formal contracts, and strikes
were often called quickly. Skilled workers had some success in
simply withholding their labor, but the less skilled (the so-called
"outdoor" workers like lumber shovers and coal yard workers)
would often walk out spontaneously and move from one workplace
to another, shutting businesses down as part of a collective action
that often involved a whole working class neighborhood, like
Bridgeport, by demanding that workers lay down their tools.
For many years after the Civil War, the police were also part
of the workers' community and could often be counted on to
sympathize with strikers or at least be neutral, especially when
labor-friendly politicians held office in the city. Preventing scabs
or strike-breakers from working was a critical part of the strategy.
Skilled workers increasingly realized that "amalgamation" or
solidarity, including solidarity with unskilled workers who were
encroaching on their trades as work became more mechanized,
was important. In the late 1870s, unions began emphasizing
public boycotts of scab work, and sympathy strikes proved critical.
The value of cooperation became increasingly apparent: in the late
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1880s building trades workers won about forty-three percent of
their strikes, according to historian Richard Schneirov, but after
forming the Building Trades Council and employing more
sympathy strikes, they doubled their rate of success by 1894.
Mass strikes at times turned violent, with attacks on employers'
property or on scabs, as well as in some skirmishes with the police.
In the 1877 railroad strike, which expanded into a general
strike, there were pitched battles between strikers and police,
especially along Halstead Street, with crowds mainly throwing
rocks (though occasionally shooting guns) while police fired into
their midst. The city's upper class, including businessmen like
Marshall Field, organized militias and neighborhood patrols to
fight off what they saw as a revolutionary mob, and United States
army troops fresh from the Indian wars were called into Chicago
to restore order. The conflict not only persuaded many rich
Chicagoans to move north along the lake shore to be farther from
working class neighborhoods and closer to the army headquarters,
but it also led them to push for a larger police force that was
independent of democratic political pressures.
During a streetcar strike in 1885, a group of prominent
employers pressed the police to make it possible for them to run
the streetcars despite the strike, and the superintendent sent in a
particularly ruthless captain, John Bonfield, who ordered officers
to club anyone near the tracks and arrest anyone who used the
word "scab." Bonfield's actions proved critical in changing the role
of the police, and it was no coincidence that he was in charge of the
police that marched into Haymarket Square the next year and
opened fire on the dwindling crowd after a bomb was thrown, most
likely by a lone anarchist.
There was a great deal of dispute within the labor movement
over the value of strikes or the best use of the strike weapon.
Although the Knights of Labor became intimately involved in
many strikes, the leaders of the Knights initially criticized strikes
as futile and urged workers to seek arbitration. Some Knights and
other leaders argued that politics, not industrial action, provided
the best hope for workers, and although Chicago anarchists
supported strikes, it was in the context of their advocating the
overthrow of capitalism through direct action, including armed
insurrection. There was, not surprisingly, more unanimity among
the economic and political elite that strikes were a bad thing.
Coinciding with the rise of the corporation and expansion of its
legal rights, there was a growing tendency in the courts to treat
strikes and other worker action as an interference in the rights of
labor to accept whatever terms employers offered and as restraints
of trade. Increasingly strikers faced federal court injunctions and
even federal troops.
Nevertheless, around the end of the nineteenth century, there
20021
Arthur J. Goldberg
was a movement across social classes towards industrial
democracy, mainly as a way of reducing civil strife and disorder,
but also to address the grievances of workers and regulate the new
world of corporate capitalism. In the vision worked out with
Chicago's Civic Federation, unions would agree to disciplined
collective bargaining and limited strikes in exchange for contracts
and recognition.
I will not attempt to summarize the struggles that remained
before a version of this deal was implemented. Needless to say,
there were severe ups and downs, as labor gained power during
World War I as part of a bargain to maintain production, lost
ground in an employer counter-offensive in the 1920s, and fought
back with sit-down strikes and a wide variety of forms of action in
solidarity during the great organizing drives of the 1930s that
were consolidated once again during wartime, in part because of
government support. The threat of disruption and the desire to lift
the economy out of the Depression helped to push through passage
of the major New Deal labor laws, which finally gave not only
recognition but also encouragement to formal collective bargaining
and action, including protection of strikes.
But in the
retrospective view of many analysts, these laws also set the stage
for new regulation of labor and restraint on actions like the strike.
Much of that came through later legislation, especially the
Taft-Hartley Act, and through interpretation of the law. This
interpretation included a footnote in a 1938 decision that opened
the door for permanent replacement of strikers, even though the
law also prohibited firing workers for going on strike-a
distinction with little difference that came to haunt labor in the
1980s and beyond. After World War II, unions thought that they
were well established in major trades and industries. Unions
often had to strike, even for long periods, to win what they wanted,
but neither leaders nor members thought that the existence of
their union was in question. The strike increasingly was tamed
and channeled into the standard scenario.
Strikes were also far more common in the United States and
more important for the labor movement here than in most of
Western Europe during the post-World War II decades. There are
many reasons for the difference. One important reason was the
existence of strong social democratic or labor parties in Europe
(and even the acceptance of many social democratic principles by
conservative parties). Working people were more likely to win
gains through politics in Europe than in the United States, most
obvious in the contrast between universal national health
insurance systems in Europe and patchwork employer-based
systems in the United States that were either collectively
bargained or built on that negotiated model. Also, in Western
Europe bargaining more often involved entire industries, with
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government frequently acting in a variety of ways to extend unionnegotiated conditions to all of the industry. By contrast with the
United States, labor was much more embedded in European
institutions and accepted by management, and strikes were both
less necessary and, when undertaken, both more political and
more likely to succeed.
With some important exceptions, like the rise in public
employee organizing, labor unions in the United States both failed
to organize broadly beyond their base in the early 1950s and
continued to confront employers who were determined to avoid
unionization, at first through practices such as matching many
conditions in unionized workplaces and adopting sophisticated
human relations strategies, then increasingly through more
aggressive tactics to block unionization efforts.
While labor leaders acted as if unions were securely
ensconced in American life, most business leaders continued to
view unions as unnecessary and undesirable.
The 1970s
represented a turning point. After the long boom of the 1960s,
corporations felt squeezed by stagflation, oil price spikes,
increased regulation (such as the occupational safety and health
act), and increasing international competition. In order to restore
profit levels, corporations mounted an assault on workers and
their unions under many guises, from relocating factories to nonunion areas or overseas to internal speed-ups. In a major symbolic
break, big United States businesses that unions thought of as
partners broke with organized labor in the late 1970s and
vigorously fought against labor law reform that would have made
organizing new members easier.
When recessions hit hard in the late 1970s and early 1980s,
corporations expanded their assault with demands for concessions
(even when they were not in financial trouble), and a tough new
approach
to collective
bargaining, including
systematic
strikebreaking and lockouts. The turning point in the statistics is
dramatic. Throughout the 1970s the number of major strikes
ranged from a low of 219 a year (in 1978) to a high of 424 (in
1974). The number dropped sharply over the next few years.
From 1984 to the present, there has not been a single year with
more than sixty-nine major strikes, whether the economy has been
in boom or bust.
What made the employer assault so successful? First, the
constraints on the strike-limits on such traditional aspects of the
strike as secondary boycotts, sympathy strikes, quickie strikes,
slowdowns, sabotage and even mass picketing-greatly weakened
the ability of unions to strike effectively. Fundamentally, the law
narrowed the strike to a contractual dispute over a limited range
of issues that involved the interests of only the employer and
employees; but, especially in times of crisis, the success or failure
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Arthur J. Goldberg
of even relatively small strikes-let alone the old pattern-setting
strikes against major employers of yesteryear-can have
tremendous significance for the balance of power in society.
Beyond the immediate employees and their employer, other
employers, as well as the rest of the population in their roles as
workers, citizens and consumers, can have a great stake in even
small disputes. PATCO is an obvious case where the ramifications
of a small union's strike extended far beyond measures they
wanted to relieve, stress and inadequate compensation. If the
PATCO strike had extended to all of the other airline unions, or to
the rest of the transportation industry, the story of the past two
decades might have been very different.
In nineteenth century Chicago, workers often went out on
strike not just for their own immediate needs but for the rights of
all workers. But the constraints built into labor law, which were
mainly pesky interferences during periods when both employers
and unions operated under the standard scenario, turned the law
into the equivalent of a permanent injunction when employers
were on the offensive against unionism itself. The final coup de
grace to the strike is often administered thanks to the ease of
bringing in permanent replacement strikebreakers.
The structures of collective bargaining and of the labor
movement itself compound the problems.
Despite some
consolidation and mergers, the labor movement and collective
bargaining in the United States remain highly fragmented and
decentralized. Indeed, with the decline of pattern bargaining and
employer associations as bargaining agents, bargaining is more
fragmented than in the era of the standard scenario strike. This
structure minimizes the strength of unions, especially in
confronting increasingly consolidated businesses, and gives added
incentive to businesses to resist union demands vigorously rather
than be put at a competitive disadvantage with other firms. Also,
these challenges are intensified because unions have to bargain
over health insurance, which many non-union employers do not
provide, and in recent years, except for a brief period when there
was the specter of national health insurance, health care costs
have been rising dramatically. So the structure of unions and
bargaining not only weakens the unions, but also gives employers
both additional incentive and means of fighting against unions
and strikes.
At the same time, many unions over the years had become
more and more bureaucratic, more top down, less democratic and
less likely either to engage or mobilize their members (although
some had always been that way). While union leaders tried to
persuade management to take their employees seriously and
appreciate how they could make the workplace more productive,
they often failed to give such attention to their own members and
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their ideas. As a result, workers were less motivated and
supportive of union goals. Also, the union lost one of its major
sources of strength in a strike, the ideas, energy and action of
workers who could do far more to make a strike succeed than
huddle around a fire barrel or desultorily carry a picket sign.
If unions had not changed enough to withstand attacks on
both the institution and the strike, businesses had changed in
many ways that made it easier for them to resist strikes. Many
were more automated, or otherwise technologically transformed,
and less labor intensive. The ranks of management had also
swollen-partly to keep many workers artificially aligned with
management rather than included in the ranks of potential union
members. (In Europe, especially in Scandinavia, most supervisors,
technicians, engineers, secretaries and other managerial staff are
as likely to be in a union as production workers). This made it
easier to operate with management personnel during strikes.
Also, corporations had grown in size, expanded globally, and often
diversified: they were often less vulnerable to strikes in one plant,
one division or even one country.
Globalization undermined strikes in several ways, especially
in manufacturing or other mobile industries. Employers could
credibly threaten to move work out of the country-and did so to
discourage unionization and weaken strikes. Global operations
provide a cushion for corporations. But globalization has also been
both an excuse and a weapon in an ongoing transformation of
business to shift more risk to employees and to make employment
relationships more contingent. Subcontracting is one example: the
real power that a group of workers confronts might not be the
employer but rather the larger corporation that contracts for work,
and striking the immediate employer-rather than the ultimate
power-can be difficult and fruitless. (Janitors who work for small
contractors that clean large office buildings are a classic example,
but they are also a good example of how unions learned to
overcome this obstacle). Contemporary corporate globalization
also exerts pressures on governments to reduce regulations and
social services, both of which can weaken the leverage that
workers have with business and socio-economic security.
The
political
and
cultural
shift
towards
laissez faire
individualism diminishes the power of the strike as well.
Strikebreakers feel less social or moral constraint about crossing
picket lines. In a dog-eat-dog world, there is less public sympathy
when the small dogs are getting devoured. There is also less of a
sense of corporate responsibility towards maintaining the
workforce-an erosion of a sense of loyalty to employees-than in
the era of the standard paradigm strike.
But one of the most important factors-if not the most
important-in the success of the corporate offensive against
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unions and their capacity to strike was the declining density of
union representation.
With only momentary pauses, union
density has been declining in the private sector as a whole and in
most individual industries since the mid-1950s (while remaining
fairly constant since 1980 in the public sector). Now only nine
percent of private sector workers are in unions.
Although
globalization and technological change have been among the
causes, most analyses conclude that the primary reasons are
employer opposition and the failure of the labor movement itself to
commit enough resources and to devise adequate strategies for
recruiting members. As union density has declined (or failed to
reach high enough levels) in different labor markets, unions have
greater difficulty striking.
At least on financial issues, the union goal has not changed
much: take wages and other compensation out of competition. But
unions need to dominate the labor force in an industry in order to
do that, especially when businesses are competitively battling with
each other over costs and prices (unlike the steel and auto
industries of the 1950s and 1960s, for example). With fewer
businesses unionized, the expectation of executives-especially as
the political and cultural climate has turned so sharply towards
free market fundamentalism-is that unions and strikes are
anachronisms that they should not have to tolerate. Also, to the
limited extent that unions can still help each other, there are
simply fewer helping hands.
All this sounds like an obituary for the strike. But, like the
announcement of Twain's death, that would be premature. Unions
are still winning many big, important strikes. Moreover, a few
unions-especially the Steelworkers-are showing that it is
possible to win at least reasonable settlements of tough strikes
that many unions would write off as hopeless causes. For example,
in the year 2000 there were several big strikes with quite different
workforces and employers that were fairly successful. Engineers,
who used their expertise to challenge management's vision for the
future, won a forty-day strike in Seattle against Boeing (then used
the victory as a springboard to a successful campaign to organize
4,500 more engineers in Kansas). Janitors took to the streets of
Los Angeles (and later in Chicago and its suburbs), mobilizing
popular support for exploited low-wage workers while organizing
pressure on the ultimate powers-the building owners-to agree
to pay higher fees to enable their contractors to pay the workers
more.
Actors from the Screen Actors Guild and the American
Federation of Television and Radio Artists held out for six months
against the major advertising agencies, using celebrity power and
mobilizing solidarity from a wide range of allies (from politicians
and sports stars to auto workers, communications workers, and
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Teamsters) in a largely successful strike that extended their
revenue streams to more new media outlets. In Minneapolis, the
Hotel and Restaurant Employees parlayed their high-profile
campaign on behalf of several undocumented immigrant
workers-whose employer had called the Immigration and
Naturalization Service after the workers had organized a unioninto a successful citywide hotel strike during a critical business
period for the hotels. A couple of years ago in Las Vegas, the same
union held out for more than six years-without a single worker
crossing the picket line-in a battle with the Frontier hotel,
eventually forcing the owner to sell to an owner who would
cooperate with the union.
Yet, not every strike is so successful, even at a time when
unions are obviously being much more cautious and selective in
deciding whether to strike. You will probably note that the list of
big, successful strikes does not include manufacturing unions that
once set the pace for the labor movement. Manufacturing strikes,
when they do occur, often fall into the category of hard cases, if not
lost causes. For example, on May 1, 1988, 670 members of the
Steelworkers went on strike at the Des Moines, Iowa, tire factory
of Titan International, one of the leading manufacturers of off-road
and agricultural tires and wheels. Morry Taylor, a maverick
businessman who ran a quixotic campaign for the Republican
presidential nomination in 1988, had assembled a collection of tire
and wheel facilities in the United States and six other countries in
Europe, Latin America and Asia. The company employed 3,500
workers in the United States and 1,500 overseas. The European
facilities were unionized, but the Steelworkers represented only
two of Titan's factories in the United States The workers in Des
Moines felt that Taylor was refusing to bargain in good faith over
issues such as pensions, retiree health benefits, two-tier wages
and harsh working conditions, including mandatory overtime for
periods of nearly a month without a break. A few months later
workers at the Natchez, Mississippi, plant also went out on strike
over a bankruptcy proceeding that the union believed Taylor was
using to eliminate the contract and longtime employees.
Union strategists had thought that Taylor would be a tough,
hard-nosed, bottom-line business owner, but that he could be
forced to bargain under sustained pressure.
They admit in
retrospect that they underestimated his determination-driven by
ego and ideology-to fight the union at all costs. Like a growing
number of executives, one union official argued that Taylor
thought "control is more important than profit." As a result, the
strike dragged on until September of this year (and the Natchez
workers just voted on Monday to ratify the agreement). Two years
into the strikes, Taylor told me that "They'll never be settled,"
adding, "I haven't bargained for over a year. I don't plan to."
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Eventually he not only bargained, but also agreed to the majority
of the union demands.
Taylor tried to run both plants from early in the conflict with
strikebreakers. But there were strong indications that he had
underestimated the value of the skills and experience of veteran
tire makers and that he had trouble getting either the quality or
quantity of production he wanted from the struck plants.
Moreover, when he tried to bring in workers from his Uruguayan
factory to train Spanish-speaking strikebreakers, the Steelworkers
contacted the union in Uruguay, which proceeded to block further
training-and threatened to strike in Uruguay if Titan tried to use
those workers again. The Uruguayan union continued to work
with the Steelworkers on its own problems with Taylor. The
Steelworkers, who ultimately maintained a web site on the conflict
in four languages, also worked with European unions, who
regularly pressured management in their home countries about
the strikes.
Closer to home, the Steelworkers worked hard to win over
public opinion, especially in the Des Moines area, and they
established alliances with community and religious groups. After
a Roman Catholic bishop in Des Moines criticized the way Titan
was treating its workers, the plant manager, a devout Catholic,
left the company. But the church support also helped strengthen
the resolve of the strikers, very few of whom crossed the picket
line, and many of whom were involved in strike-related activities
with allies from around the country and beyond.
Two days after the Natchez workers struck, LaSalle Bank
extended a line of credit to Titan. The Steelworkers saw LaSalle,
which was the lead creditor until the ABN/Amro bank took over
that role earlier this year, as directly financing Titan's resistance
to the strike and made LaSalle a major target of prayer vigils,
demonstrations at bank branches, leafleting of customers, and
threatened actions at the marathon race sponsored by the bank.
The union targeted dealers and trade shows with informational
leafleting that raised questions about the quality of tires being
produced by the strikebreakers. It protested at annual meetings
and demonstrated at various homes or businesses of Taylor, his
wife, and his business associates.
Individual steelworkers
introduced shareholder resolutions and even filed a lawsuit
against the company.
The union also launched organizing
campaigns at non-union Titan plants. It attacked the subsidies
local government gave to a new Titan plant in Brownsville, Texas,
that Taylor had hoped might provide an alternative to the struck
plants. They began to use Taylor's own flamboyant personality
against him, inciting him to speak out publicly on the conflict and
regularly putting his foot in his mouth, or taking advantage of his
tendency to micromanage and keeping him distractedly moving
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from one location to another to deal with a new union offensive.
The Steelworkers researched Titan's financial dealings-which
were often elaborate and dubious-and regularly publicized
shortcomings in corporate performance and potential legal or
financial problems to the investment community and the general
public. They tried to push Taylor into selling the company if he
wasn't going to settle, but Taylor only sold off some individual
facilities.
Despite Taylor's effort to keep operating, sales declined,
profits turned into losses, and the stock price plummeted by twothirds at one point. While a soft agricultural economy would have
posed problems anyway, even Taylor admitted that the strike
hurt, but he insisted that he had to drive down costs in
anticipation of a flood of cheap tires from China after that country
acquired permanent normal trading relations with the United
States and entered the World Trade Organization. Finally, last
summer, creditors who had already cut Titan's line of credit twice
moved up the date for renegotiation of the line of credit by one
year to this month. Shortly after that announcement, Taylor
indicated that he was ready to negotiate. After several weeks of
bargaining, the two sides reached a contractual agreement.
The Steelworkers won at great length and cost, and the strike
itself was effective in hurting Titan financially. But the union's
lead strategist at Titan, sharing an increasingly common bit of
union wisdom, argued that, "you can lose a strike on the picket
line, but you cannot win a strike on the picket line. The strike in
most cases is insufficient to force companies to make a decent
settlement. There are too many ways to get around it." There was
no magic bullet in this or any other conflict, Doug Niehouse said.
The union strategy "was being everywhere Taylor was and
involved in everything he did." The union would attack from every
direction, setting up roadblocks for every escape route that he
might try, but leave him an opening to return to negotiations.
Instead of just a frontal assault, the union promised Taylor "a
thousand points of pain." Echoing the view of former Steelworker
president George Becker, Niehouse said, "the real key is that you
create a situation so that top management, from the time they get
up in the morning till the time they go to bed, they worry about
what you're doing, and if you're doing a good job, they wake up
with nightmares."
In other successful strikes, such as the Teamster UPS and
Verizon strikes, the unions spent many months soliciting ideas
from members, educating them on the issues, and developing
solidarity through protests and other actions at work.
Increasingly, workers themselves become the spokespeople for the
strike-again an effective tactic in reaching out to the public in the
UPS and janitor strikes. In some cases, companies are especially
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Arthur J. Goldberg
vulnerable to publicity that tarnishes their carefully polished
In other cases, they are vulnerable to
corporate images.
regulatory, legal and political pressure, from investigations of
environmental violations to challenges of their requests for
permits. Unions are finding great value in new alliances with
students, academics, clergy, immigrant rights groups, antiglobalization movements, feminists, and civil rights leaders in
carrying out their strikes. For example, steelworkers and fairly
militant environmentalist groups on the west coast formed a
dramatic alliance in a fight against Maxxam Corporation, which
had locked out workers from Kaiser Aluminum and through its
Pacific Lumber Division was clear cutting old growth forests.
Financial supporters, customers and other business allies are
likely to feel less deeply invested in a struck company's battles
with its union and not want to be smeared with their dirty
business. There are hosts of tactics more traditionally related to
strikes that unions can pursue, often skirting the edges of the law.
Unions can, for example, encourage workers who remain in or
return to a factory to "work to rule" or effectively slow down
production. They can call boycotts or, even without calling a
formal secondary boycott, provide information to consumerswhether individuals or businesses-that might discourage their
patronizing businesses that use the struck company's products.
Civil disobedience, like the janitors practiced, can spread the pain
and raise the stakes in the strike, and as long as unions can
maintain the moral high ground, as many underpaid workers can,
such disruption can be effective. Recently Steelworkers president,
Leo Gerard, went a step further and threatened to occupy LTV
steel plants if the company tried to dismantle closed mills-an
echo of the old sit-down strikes.
Increasingly unions are also cooperating on major strikes to
the extent that they can, and they are reviving moribund old
(It is
central labor councils and state federations to help.
noteworthy that the American Federation of Labor-Congress of
Industrial Organizations in Illinois did not help in the Staley
conflict because it was miffed at the local union's failure to pay its
dues to the federation, even though the Staley defeat was a
crushing blow to workers throughout the state). Unions loan
money where it is needed, join in financial pressure campaigns,
swell the ranks of supportive protests, help to enforce picket lines
and mobilize public opinion in support of strikers in ways that
were much more rare even a few years ago. There is still far too
little of such cooperation, but to the extent that it does take place,
it reflects recognition that strikes have become broadly political
issues, much as unions are now trying to make organizing new
members a political issue as well.
The old framework for conventional strikes is gone, leaving
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only the constraints and none of the supports. But the biggest
constraint, argues Niehouse of the Steelworkers, comes from laws
that make organizing more difficult by sanctioning employer
interference in workers' decisions about forming a union. If there
were a higher percentage of workers overall or in specific
industries that were in unions, the labor movement would be
strong enough that employers would not try many of the tactics
they now readily deploy against a weakened labor movement.
Yet, even in the current context, unions can pick targets
carefully and develop comprehensive campaigns in which strikes
can play an important role that will win in far more instances
than unions have tried in recent years. But the strike itself is no
longer the focus of attention. It is just another tactic. The
question is how to gain social power to compel employers to
bargain fairly with workers. The strike is part of a broader
political challenge to the corporations, the political elite, and the
ideologies of free market fundamentalism and corporate
globalization. As part of the challenge to the ruling powers and
ideas, unions will have to rely more on political action of the
broadest sort to change laws that hamstring both organizing and
striking in a comprehensive, effective way that permits workers to
act legally in solidarity with each other.
Industrial action,
including strikes, as well as sit-ins, mass marches, and protests
that disrupt everyday social and political life, will be essential.
History strongly suggests that workers make major structural
gains mainly through the threat of widespread social chaos and
conflict; even if once they secure some institutional power such
disruptive tactics become less necessary.
The labor movement is tentatively moving in this direction.
Organizing and collective bargaining are increasingly linked, with
unions striking for recognition and bargaining to win employer
neutrality in non-union workplaces. Organizing and politics are
also more closely linked, as unions insist that politicians they back
provide tangible support for organizing (and as at least a few
politicians, especially progressive Democrats, are realizing,
unionized workers can provide a big political boost). The heyday of
the narrowly economic strike may have faded, but the effective use
of politically savvy strikes aimed at changing the broad balance of
power and the ideological climate is both possible and necessary if
unions hope to restore their power.
[David Moberg is a senior editor of In These Times.] 12/12/01.
Mr. Franklin: Thank you very much, I am glad that David
went ahead of me since he basically made many of my arguments,
but I am going to baffle and confuse you because I will make the
same points, but possibly point in a different direction. Let me
just step back for a moment and say one thing: there are very few
cities that have two writers who are devoted full time to writing
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about labor.
This says something about Chicago, but also
something about the lack of labor writers in the United States. So,
I am very proud to be here with David and also very proud that
folks care this much about what we do for a living.
I have lead a schizophrenic life for a little more than a decade.
I have been the labor writer for the Chicago Tribune and
temporarily filled in as a foreign correspondent.
It is not
uncommon for me to go from a strike somewhere in the United
States to Jerusalem to cover a story. Folks ask me: "Isn't that a
dangerous life?" and I say, "no, the laborers only threaten to hurt
you." So, it has been an interesting experience.
I appreciate very much what David had to say and I think
what I am going to do is almost repeat what he said, but argue
that we are at an important point in history. I also appreciate his
helping us to understand history because I think it is very
important for unions, for workers, and for Americans, to
understand the scope and direction of history. Too often unions do
not. Too often we, as citizens, do not. We can learn a lot from
history and my argument is that we are at a very critical point in
the future of labor relations and future democracy too, where
unions will be. There are those who predict that in ten years the
density of workers in the private sector will drop to five percent. If
that is true, we will see a marked change in the situation. My
argument is that the situation is not as hopeful as David
intimated to a degree.
My argument is that the facts are
disheartening. We are pointed downward towards less use of
strikes. However, in some cases, that is not a depressing point of
view. If unions rely less upon strikes, then that should be seen as
rational behavior.
A lot of what is true about the status of the strike is
confusing.
As David also pointed out, it is important to
understand that the nature of the strike has changed. What I see
taking place is that strikes will be used in more sensitive
industries. Strikes will be used in industries where there is
growth, industries where organizing is new, among university
graduate students, among social workers, among nurses, among
engineers. Workers will organize for a sense of justice and not as
much for the importance of winning a pay increase. What you will
find is the use of a strike in an area where there is growth, where
there is this equilibrium, and where there is the energy to come
forward.
There are also exceptions, and I think David's point about the
success of the seventeen thousand engineers at Boeing is
important. Here was a group of workers who Boeing felt would
never strike. In all the history of the unionization there, they had
struck for one day and when the workers and the engineers went
out, they went out not so much over economic issues, although
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that was the ultimate factor. They felt there was an imbalance
there. The blue-collar workers and the machinists had been
successful, but Boeing had taken the engineers for granted. No
one really thought that the engineers would stay on strike.
"Engineers with Ph.D's and Masters Degrees-what are they
going to do?" Well, they stayed out for forty days. I was talking
with one of the folks who was involved in helping them plan their
work through their strike. It was. a fascinating discussion the first
few days. Here were former United Mine Workers (UMW) officials
talking about their experiences in the mines and here were the
engineers kind of figuring out, "Well, gee, you know, we've been
told that these burning barrels are environmental hazards, how
will we retrofit the burning barrels so we no longer have fine
problems?" And that is what they did. They redesigned the
burning barrels-no problems. They were not disputing that. So
what we saw in the case of the Boeing engineers is that a sense of
injustice provoked people who may not have been expected to
strike.
David made the same point about the janitors. I agree totally
and I want to take it a step further. I thought the success of the
janitors in Los Angeles and Chicago last year was fascinating.
Predictions prior to those events were that they would not succeed,
that they were going against an industry spread across the
country. What they did wisely was create a pendulum. Win in Los
Angeles, then take the strike to Chicago, then to Boston-a
brilliant pattern. They were going against pattern bargaining but
creating their own pattern bargaining. What did they do? They
built upon community support. They reached out to Latinos, out
to Eastern Europeans, out to the Asian community, and then built
upon that community support. It shows the experience and ability
of the union to expand its broad base. Once again, the point it
made is that when unions reach out and raise the social voice, they
are more successful. The predictions at the start of both disputes,
in Los Angeles and Chicago, were that they would not succeed.
If you recall there was a fear that the Writer's Guild would
enter a long dispute last summer in Los Angeles. The possibility
of a strike was overcome because of a prior dispute by the Screen
Actor's Guild. They set the precedent. The dispute lasted five
months and involved thirty thousand members, so when the
Writer's Guild threatened to strike, there was fear that the second
strike would be just as difficult. There was also fear that the
union, this time, would rely upon Hollywood stars and corporate
campaigns.
Take also the case of the United Parcel Workers strike. The
theme of that strike, framed by the Teamsters, was that part-time
work is not fair work. The message got across. The union was
successful in pointing out an issue that reached a greater
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audience.
Airline workers, well, I am baffled how little we understand
about the success of the airline unions in organizing the pilots.
This is one of the most unionized industries in the United States,
and it is very successful. The last major strike by the pilots was at
Northwest Airlines. The pilots have been successful in using the
leverage of: "We are not replaceable, we are important to your
business, if you take us off the job, you will lose." In each one of
these cases, what I find is that unions are successful in discovering
points of leverage and using the leverage to their advantage.
All this being said, quite often strikes do not work. Last year
if I am correct, we had thirty-nine strikes. The year before we had
seventeen strikes. In 1950, we were rolling along at about four
hundred strikes. How did we get to this place? Once again,
companies are more willing to fight unions in places you would
never imagine. I would never have believed that the newspapers
in Detroit would have taken on the workers in the citadel of
organized labor-in a town where a hundred thousand workers
would have shown up for Labor Day. The message in Detroit was
a message I think companies have learned across the country.
Employers realize the pendulum has changed and are more willing
to take challenges. Detroit was important, but I think Detroit
learned from Peoria, learned from Decatur, learned from around
the United States, learned that we cannot suffer as much.
In fact, if you recall, in the midst of the dispute between
Caterpillar and United Auto Workers (UAW), Caterpillar officials
met with officials from the big three and asked, "why don't you
ever take on your auto unions? Look how successful we have
been." The message was: "See what we have done. We're not the
only ones that carry this out." So, I think the first thing is this
sense that the situation has changed.
David also made the point about pattern bargaining. The
demise of pattern bargaining is a great defeat. When you cannot
control the industry across the board, you cannot win the same
situation for all workers through one strike. Look back at what
happened with Caterpillar. In the midst of all of its troubles with
Caterpillar, the Deere Company went to the union and said, "well,
you know, we like what Caterpillar has, we think it's a good
situation." Fearful of another battle, UAW reached an agreement
that was not as far-reaching as it had originally sought. When
unions lose control industry-wide, they face reality and cannot
receive what they once had.
Replacement workers. As Jerry pointed out, nothing is more
significant. From the PATCO case onward, the threat of replacing
workers is a nightmare that most unions cannot deal with. In the
case of Caterpillar, the company said: "We're not going any
further, we think we will replace you." In one day, thirty-five
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thousand Americans called the company and said, "we'll take
those jobs." That was a powerful warning to the union. Within
two days, the union went back to work. The company never
replaced its workers.
Globalization. I cannot repeat enough how globalization has
changed the scenario. A company based in Zurich, in Tokyo, in
Hong Kong does not have the same concern about what is
happening in the United States. Oftentimes, unions frame the
issue of globalization by saying we must protect the workers in
San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
We must think about what is
happening in Tijuana. Well, my argument is you must think
about what is happening here in Alabama or in North Carolina or
Peoria. In the case of Decatur, A.E. Staley Company was bought
by a British owned firm, Tate and Lyle. Once this was a company
with thousands of workers. In fact, in the early sixties, there had
been a study done at this facility by an efficiency expert and their
conclusion was that the company had too many workers, and the
company's officials said, "that's the idea of the company. We were
born here, it's meant to create jobs." Things change as a company
moves overseas.
In the past, when you struck a facility, this facility lost
money. The story of Titan Tires is a classic example of this. But,
when the company has facilities around the world, when they can
ship product from Burma, from Mexico, from Honduras, that
changes the whole equation. If you shut these factories down in
the United States, they can bring products from elsewhere. This is
exactly what Bridgestone/Firestone did. In the midst of its tire
strike, anticipating a situation, the company built a stockpile of
tires.
Also, when you have a company that is broad and
widespread, a loss in the United States can be adjusted from
outside the United States. Global companies change the equation.
Sometimes, however, unions do not realize the situation. The
United Steel Workers Union, I think, is a good example of a union
that has faced up to that situation. I would also say Unite and
Electrical Workers Union understand, but in most cases unions do
not. Too often what you find is unions going it alone. "We are the
proudly named union. We can do this by ourselves. We know our
industry," or, worse yet, "if we cooperate with them, what will they
want from us?" So, you do not find broad campaigns. And there is
a larger issue.
If you take this whole history, the burden of this history, and
impose upon it what happened in September in New York, in
Washington, and a field outside of Pittsburgh, you see that the
mood has changed in this country. What you find today are some
unions that say, "this is not the time to strike. This is not the time
to confront employers with contract disputes. This is the case of
Local 1199 in New York City. They moved back their contract
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bargaining for six months, and the word has gone out from some
unions that we will not raise these issues now. We will accept
what we can. There are mixed feelings about that. If you recall,
at the end of September, American Federation of State, County,
and Munipcipal Employees (AFSCME) workers in Minnesota
carried out a strike-a very difficult decision. I do not know how
many unions would carry forth on that. There is a change in the
mood.
There is also a sense that we are in hard times. Hard times
mean we do not have enough money. We are laying off workers. If
you happen to be in the hotel workers union, or the service
employees union, which has not been hit as hard, your finances
are markedly reduced. Can you organize? Can you wage large
strikes? During a period of entrenchment there are some unions
that move ahead, but other unions have also learned from the
pattern they entered in the 1970s and 1980s. Unions began to
withdraw, began to defend themselves, began to say, "these are
the times in our industry when we have to hold on to what we
have." That is common thinking. We are also, in a time where
unions are saying, "there are sixty-five of us, sixty-five unions. I
represent warehouse workers but I could represent nurses. I could
represent teachers or psychiatrists. I can do everything." And,
what you find is that unions are grabbing for one another. If I am
correct, there are five unions looking to organize the healthcare
industry. Five unions looking to organize the higher education
industry and you can go down the line.
Where there is growth, unions who have been there are trying
to grow. Unions who have not been there are also trying to grow.
What you find is disparate organizing efforts and the message I
would send to the workers out there, even those who are
organizing and striking, is that this is a difficult situation. We do
not have the support. We are not unified, and we cannot overcome
what we face. This is the very inertia that unions have had to
overcome. Look at the recent failure of the UAW after many
efforts to organize the workers at Nissan. This was going to be the
final effort to break the success of foreign automakers. Almost all
foreign automakers in the United States are non-union. This was
to be the first victory, and it failed. What happens when a union
faces that? In most cases, inertia sets in. A defeat pushes you
backward not forward.
Let me tell you the story of why I chose to write about
Decatur. My book is called THREE STRIKES. As you know, there
were not three strikes in Decatur. There were two strikes and a
lock-out. Once again, the reason why I appreciated Dave's talk
about history, is that what I learned from the history of organized
labor and from writing about these disputes was that the mid
1990s was a moment from which we could look at where organized
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labor was and where it had been. The lessons I learned also apply
largely to blue-collar unions, unions that have suffered
entrenchment, and unions that suffered the avalanche of job losses
that occurred during the 1980s.
There were three disputes that represent the weakening of
the unions, and all three center around Decatur, Illinois. The
UAW at Caterpillar, A.E. Staley, a long time locally grown firm in
Decatur, and Bridgestone/Firestone, which happened to have its
oldest facility in Decatur. In all three disputes you had an issue
about who was in charge. Essentially, the company came to the
union and said, "the rules don't work anymore. We are a global
company and American workers are on an escalator of wages
taking them up higher and higher. We cannot compete in
Thailand and Japan if we pay you those wages." What a
fascinating argument to make, that the company's success means
the worker cannot also succeed. All of these three companies were
the dominant firms in their industry. So the unions faced an
argument by the companies that the rules must change.
In the case of Bridgestone/Firestone, they wanted continuous
manufacturing. They wanted to run the factories around the
clock-an idea that had been introduced in the tire industry by
Michelin Tire when they opened their first facility in the American
South. The union was not able to organize Michelin. The idea
spread throughout the tire industry. Running a machine for ten
hours, twelve hours, might sound good, if you have never done it.
You can work at a utility hitting buttons for two or three hours in
a row, but standing at a machine and making a tire, I discovered,
is much like cutting jewelry. It is not easy. There is actually an
overworked workers' syndrome, those who have worked long
hours, such as nurses, often fall asleep at the wheel on the way
home. The Firestone workers did not want to do continuous work.
They did not want to go to three days on the job at ten or twelve
hours and then shift off. The company was also arguing for a
change that meant doing away with weekends. The weekends
would no longer be required. The company would do away
weekend pay, and diminish overtime.
In the case of A.E. Staley, it was much the same thing. The
facility had been operated for many years with a small union,
Allied Industrial Workers. The company said to the union, "we are
losing money in this industry as a whole. This is an old facility
and the union's awfully powerful here. You can make a lot of
decisions and we do not think we need that. We need to run the
facility continuously, days and nights. We need to change
workers, put younger workers on day shifts, and put out more
work to sub-contractors." Well the workers were terrified. It was
a change in our rules and in our understanding of the situation
Caterpillar and Bridgestone/Firestone workers struck against
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the companies. However, fearful that they would be crushed by
the company, the Staley workers began to go through a process of
work rule changes with which they tried to slow down the job.
Following work rules on the job did not work. The company,
claiming sabotage, locked out the workers. There are only a few
countries that allow companies to replace workers and I think it is
the same for lock-outs. Only a handful of nations allow this as
part of industrial relations. So, the workers at Staley were locked
out. There were about eight hundred workers locked out at the
time the dispute began. The unions did not have a strategy. They
thought they did, but looking back, I think they would agree they
did not. The autoworkers figured: "same old strike, we'll face the
company, shut a few plants down and they'll come to us."
Bridgestone/Firestone faced the United Rubber Workers
Union. At one time, it was a progressive, powerful, imaginative
union, a union that represented a swath of workers across the
industrial scenario; however, tires are not made the way they used
to be. The union had shrunk and so had its finances. When the
workers went on strike they only had enough money for a few
months of strike pay and a few strategy consultants.
In
comparison, A.E. Staley's workers, represented by the Allied
Industrial Workers, were told by the union, "we really cannot help
you in this case. We are a small union. We are having a hard
time running our operations here in Milwaukee. You should get
outside help." So they sought outside consultants and one of those
was Ray Rogers.
If you are familiar with the history of the Hormel strike, you
know that Ray is a controversial fellow who thinks he began the
corporate campaigns in the south against southern textile mills.
He may have. Oftentimes, Ray is brought in as a fireman at the
last minute when there is a dispute. Ray's approach is to wage an
all out battle. In this case the unions accepted him. So, what you
had-in this blue-collar town where much of the work is union and
industrial-were three major disputes.
The companies did one thing that surprised the unions. They
used public relations.
In Decatur and throughout Illinois,
Caterpillar told workers, "you know the union in Detroit really
doesn't represent you." The union was astounded and the message
to them was, "you're Illinois folks, those are Detroit people who are
trying to change your mind." The same thing happened with A.E.
Staley, who said to its workers, "look how backward, look how
small your union is, look what we're doing, look at the industry."
It was a gesture that the unions were not prepared for. The
unions did not reach out as much as they could have. They could
not tell the story. What was most stunning to the workers was
that their basic assumption, that the company could not do
without them, was wrong.
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Likewise, to the astonishment of the Caterpillar workers,
Caterpillar said, "fine, you want to strike, then strike." So,
Caterpillar took its entire white-collar workforce up to the level of
vice-president and put them on the line, and they were making
Caterpillar tractors. I know of only one person who lost part of her
finger. It was a secretary, and she said she was glad to give it for
the company. To the union's astonishment, they produced tractors
that did not explode and did not harm people. They were
successful. The same thing happened at A.E. Staley. They
suddenly decided, "Gee, we don't need all these workers. Heck,
instead of eight hundred we need five hundred, four hundred,
three-twenty." The number dropped markedly. They went from
manual labor and manual control facilities to technology. The
union assumption that the company could not function without
them was broken down.
The same thing also happened to some degree at
Bridgestone/Firestone. I am sure all of you are familiar with the
story of exploding Ford Explorer tires. I think this was a good
example of when a company goes to war with its workers over a
product that is sold to the public and it becomes a liability for the
company. It has never been proven that the tire flaws were caused
by the Decatur workers. In fact, the argument is made more
broadly that Decatur made a larger number of these tires, which
turned out to be flawed, but that Bridgestone/Firestone made the
same flawed tires in its other facilities. The facility in Decatur is
an older facility, using an older manufacturing process. As a
result, more of its tires may have been flawed. Initially, the union
argued that replacement workers could not do this work, which I
liken to crafting jewelry. So in the case of Bridgestone/Firestone,
we saw an example where replacement workers were brought in,
and the union was successful in raising doubts about the quality of
their work.
I talked earlier about how companies have been able to
change, and take advantage of the change in the community's
mood. What struck me about Decatur, and I thought this was a
message, was that this was a heartland Midwest community.
Most of the folks who worked in this town of eighty thousand knew
people, or shopped with people, or went to church, or hunted, or
had relatives, were married, or played golf with people in these
factors. At the same time, you had people crossing the picket
lines. You had a sense that when these folks were arrested by the
police for demonstrating, and they went to court, the police said,
"watch, they'll always be found guilty." The mood was against
them. I thought that was fascinating. What you found there,
much to the unions' surprise, was that they were viewed as
whiners and complainers. They were able to raise funds from
around the United States, and they were able to reach out and find
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support, but they did not have the same support at home. I think
what changed was that people did not think it was a strike they
could stand behind. The people of Decatur were saying: "These
people are making eighteen dollars an hour, where I'm making
seven dollars an hour in this warehouse, why can't I take that
job?" That alone is a great defeat when unions try to wage this
battle.
I want to touch something here, and I don't know how to raise
this because I think sometimes I see this and it is hard to explain
what happens in a strike, in a union situation. I think something
is lost in the dialogue that goes on between unions and companies.
I know one of the fascinating aspects of the battle between the
autoworkers and Caterpillar was that it became a battle on paper.
The union filed more than a thousand complaints with the
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)-a record-setting event,
never seen before-and this would have been a battle totally on
paper with no humanity. What I am talking about here is the
nature of the strike and Dave pointed this out a second ago. A
strike is a very emotional situation. It is a "strike." I think in
other languages, it comes to me as a much stronger word because
it truly is one person hurting the other, one person striking out
against the other. It is a war. What I found lost in the
understanding of the situation is how corrosive a strike can
become and how, when unions and companies go to war with each
other, they forget who is caught in the middle and that there is a
big price, a heavy price, paid by those folks in the middle. I often
wonder when union leaders and when company officials say that
they will go to the ends and fight, whether they realize what they
are asking the people to do. Let me step back for a second and say
when they do that, I never see the poll results of shareholders
asked whether they want to put these workers' jobs on the line. I
do not think that takes place when companies talk about
defending their profit margins. When union officials say, we will
fight this until no man is left behind, I very rarely see union
presidents or their assistants returning to the picket lines three
years later.
In Decatur, there were a number of heart attacks, nervous
breakdowns and suicides. One person who committed suicide was
a union official from a small UAW local in Denver who had urged
his members to hold out against the company. It was a small
parts facility. They were relatively reluctant and he had stood up
for what he felt was right. When the union finally decided that
the strike was over, that they could not go on, that they had to go
back and accept the company's terms, his response was, "I can't
stand up for what I stood up for. I made a mistake." The folks
who talked with him that day in Detroit said, "Oh don't feel so bad
about it. You can cope with the situation. We are getting through
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until tomorrow." He did not accept that. He went back home to
Denver and took his life the next day. How many people commit
suicide in union battles? I do not think there are any good figures
anywhere - maybe two, three, five, ten in large disputes-but
these are very human prices. I go through this whole process,
because a strike is important for many issues. But, when a strike
is waged badly, from both sides, there is a price that must not be
forgotten.
In Decatur, where I spent a lot of time, there are fathers who
will not talk to sons. There are neighbors that will not talk to
neighbors. One of the persons I wrote about in my book was a
priest, Father Martin Mangen who I like very much and who died
recently of cancer. He told a story about one of the workers who
was recently hit in a car accident. Before he died, the Father was
called to give rites to the worker. At the worker's deathbed, his
wife looked at him and his dying and said, "At least you don't have
to go to the Staleys tomorrow." Father Mangen recounted that
story because he was struck by the power of that message.
When he went to visit the cemetery a few days later, a worker
came up to him and said, "Father, I haven't seen you in a long
time," and Father Mangen-who is a little leprechaun-like man
who became caught up in the union movement-said, "Where have
you been and everything?" The worker said, "Well you know, I
could never go back to the factory. I wouldn't take that job. I'm
working here as a gravedigger." Then he said, "But you know
Father, I've never talked to my son since then. He went back to
work. He crossed the picket line." These are stories that happen
when strikes fail or even when the workers win. I wonder if we
remember the tremendous price people have to pay.
I told you stories about union difficulties. Violence takes
place. In the case of Caterpillar, there were shots fired at
Caterpillar officials. There were threats made, and there were
also people who crossed the picket lines fearlessly, mistakenly. I
think they suffered too, those who thought about it. One of the
workers I talked to, and it took me three years to get him to tell
me about his case, explained that he made a mistake. He crossed
the picket line the first day, thinking, "oh, they're going to go back
to work." When they did not go back to work, he was stuck inside
the factory, and about a month later, while on the job, he had a
nervous breakdown. From what he could figure out, it was a heart
attack. Whatever it was, he has not been the same since then, and
the company has moved him from job to job to job to job. He never
really held a permanent job. Now, when he gets home from work,
he sits on his front porch and watches every car drive by, thinking
that someone will attack him.
I think these are great, great problems and I raise these
because I have a point here. When unions do not represent the
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workers, do not fight to the end, do not send the message out that
they will stand behind the workers, then it sends a different
message. It sends a message that it is not worth standing up for
these people. It is not worth going to battle. The steel workers are
a good example. I think they learned in early battles against
Ravenswood and Bridgestone/Firestone that you must wage a
large battle. You have to go around the world.
There is a wonderful story about George Becker telling the
strategist for the union, "I want you to take on
Bridgestone/Firestone. Find out every weak point possible." They
had no idea what they were going to do. All they knew is they
would spread their tentacles worldwide They began fighting the
company in Japan, in Turkey, in Argentina, forming alliances with
people who make tires around the world, learning all the weak
points.
They even learned the personal fax number of the
president of Bridgestone Company. So, every day they would send
him a message saying, "here's what we're doing." In that case, the
steel workers, a large union, spent a lot of money and the message
was, "we'll defend you." They did not totally win their battle, but I
think the message there is that when unions engage in these
battles, and they are so difficult, and they are so hard to win, and
they do not win, and they do not in the end stand up for the
workers, then the workers go back and accept the same conditions
that the company offered them in the first place.
In the case of Caterpillar and UAW, the UAW fought its way
back on to the job. They went back on the same conditions that
had been offered six years earlier by Caterpillar. At one point, the
union agreed to go back under the condition that Caterpillar leave
one hundred and twenty of its workers, who the company had
disciplined, on the outside. The union members voted down that
contract. How simple it would have been to understand that after
such a long battle, you do not leave those people on the outside. To
me, the message there is that unions have a lot of responsibility on
their shoulders.
So, if my scenario is correct, what am I telling you? We are
going to have fewer strikes, which may be rational. You do not
commit suicide when you do not have to. You do not extend
beyond the border when it is unwise. When you have a population
who are undocumented but willing to take the chances and willing
to fight, then you can carry out a strike. But, when you are up
against a situation where you could be a victim in an extended
legal battle, you stand back. Makes sense. But what are we left
with? I do not hear today, in 2001, the same talk about
labor/management cooperation. I do not hear as many companies
talking about traveling on the high road. Each of the companies I
talked about, Caterpillar, Bridgestone/Firestone, and A.E. Staley,
to a degree, also talked about worker participation, worker
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engagement, sharing all of our concerns. But, when these disputes
came up, that all went out the window. I raise this as a moral
question. I do not know the answer.
When you have this situation, what happens to the workers
who are there, frustrated, unhappy, feeling a sense of defeat.
Where does that frustration go? Let me raise one more question
for you, and this is the bigger issue when we talk about history. If
you look at unions without any perspective, look at labor relations
in a small microscope, then you are making a big mistake. I think
we are really talking about democracy here. What do I mean?
Economic rights are human rights. The right to be treated fairly
on the job because of your race, your sex, your age, your disability,
is a human right. When human rights are not articulated, are not
respected, we have less democracy. When unions are weaker and
there is nobody else who bargains on their behalf or raises those
issues, I think democracy is diminished. I think we lose this
perspective. If we just look at the failure of unions to use the
strike as a weapon, we are really ignoring the bigger issue. How
does democracy function? We all have rights, if you cannot
articulate those rights, if we cannot share, if we cannot have a
dialogue from both points of view, labor and union, then
democracy is less than what it should be. Thank you.